The number of applications for international protection in European member states has fallen below pre-crisis levels, the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) says. According to findings in their latest report entitled; ‘EU+ asylum trends 2018 survey’, there has been a considerable drop in the recognition rate of applications over the last three years. EASO states that EU+ countries had registered 634,700 applications in 2018. This represented a 10% drop on 2017 and a third year decline following the major demand for international protection applications in 2015.

The European Migration Network (EMN) published today on World day of social justice, a study on the labour market integration of non-EU nationals into the labour markets of 25 European Union (EU) Member States. Persisting unemployment gap: The effective integration of migrants into the labour markets of EU countries is a key challenge. While unemployment rates have been decreasing steadily since 2014, the gap between unemployment rates of third-country nationals and that of native and EU-born remains. The study, “Labour Market Integration of Third-Country Nationals in EU Member States”, focuses on first generation migrants legally staying in EU countries, who have the right to work. "We found that the three most common obstacles to labour market integration of migrants in most EU countries relate to the accreditation of job qualifications and assessment of skills, discriminatory behaviours in recruitment processes, and insufficient language skills,” said Ave Lauren, National Coordinator of EMN Estonia. “However, the migration influx in 2014-16 set labour market integration high on the political agenda and triggered policy changes. Most EU countries continue working to address these and other integration challenges", added Ave Lauren. Tackling the unemployment gap: Key learning points of the study include: 1. integration programmes are more successful with long-term structural national funding; 2.setting clear targets for the impact of integration measures rather than the effectiveness of implementation helps identify good practices and evaluate initiatives; 3. the private sector is a valuable complement to public sector integration measures; while the public-sector focuses on providing skills to find employment (such as how to search for a job), the private sector focuses on measures integrating migrant workers to workplaces, such as training and enhancing intercultural relations. Background: The study is the result of a collaboration of migration and asylum experts representing EMN contact points across the EU. The European Migration Network (EMN) is a Europe-wide network consisting of National Contact Points (NCPs) in the Member States and Norway, providing information on migration and asylum. The EMN was officially set up in 2008 by the European Commission on behalf of the European Council in order to satisfy the need of a regular exchange of reliable information on migration and asylum related issues on a European level. More information: EMN study “Labour Market Integration of Third-Country Nationals in EU Member States”; One pager of the study; Executive summary ; Full text . Country reports: labour market Integration studies in your country; World day of social justice (United Nations).

For the fifth consecutive winter, bitter sub-zero temperatures pose health and life-threatening challenges for the conflict-affected people in eastern Ukraine. The elderly, comprising 30 per cent of those affected, suffer most. The humanitarian community is striving to provide winterization assistance to the most vulnerable people in Ukraine’s Eastern Conflict Area. As part of the effort, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) – funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania – is distributing electric heaters and cast-iron stoves to the residents of the small towns. These settlements along the contact line suffer from shelling, lack of vital infrastructure, restrictions of movement and mine contamination. Over 500 households, including single parents, families with three and more children, people with disabilities and the elderly received this essential assistance that will help them endure the harsh winter. Recently, humanitarian agencies called for USD 162 million to respond to the humanitarian situation of an estimated 3.5 million people in eastern Ukraine.

According to the first “Report on the health of refugees and migrants in the WHO European Region”, released by the WHO Regional Office for Europe, migrants and refugees are likely to have good general health, but they can be at risk of falling sick in transition or while staying in receiving countries due to poor living conditions or adjustments in their lifestyle. International migrants make up only 10% (90.7 million) of the total population in the WHO European Region. Less than 7.4% of these are refugees. In some European countries, citizens estimate that there are 3 or 4 times more migrants than there really are.

There is extensive media attention given to migration from North Africa to Europe across the Mediterranean.
The BBC has called attention to the likely larger and more deadly flow of migrants across the Sahara, citing data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). In 2015 there were 6,000 traffickers in the Agadez region of Niger who transported some 340,000 migrants across the Sahara to Libya. The migrants were eventually bound for Europe. They came from all over West Africa to Agadez, long a center of the cross Sahara trade.

IOM, the United Nations Migration Agency, convenes in Paris this week (15-16 January), the world’s first International Forum on Migration Statistics, with partners Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA).

Migrant crisis: Austria sets asylum claims cap and transit limit. Officials say 80 asylum applications will be accepted each day, and a maximum of 3,200 people will be allowed to travel through Austria.

Immigrants living in Britain illegally will face abrupt eviction from rental properties under new laws designed to make Britain a tougher place to live in, the government will announce as it redoubles its response to the Calais migrant crisis.